Well, I personally like it. I really tried not to use too much colors, but I looked at real cars, and in real it's quite simular. But the sky is blue right..?
One thing that I noticed is is that this really looks the best for well-rounded cars, like the FZ and FOX for example.
Boxy cars look kinda funky and way too flat shaded but with some glossy look. But nothing you can do about that I guess . I still looks fine.
What I think this shows is that LFS needs probably TWO reflection layers of some sort. Because this kind of 'chrome' reflection does look nice, but there still needs to be some hints of environment reflecting off the car.
That comparison shot you did of the old and new reflections, that shows that LFS isn't all that nice looking but it still gives the windows some depth and the entire car some perspective for its shape (because the clouds 'wrap' the car).
I don't know if you want to try doing this, but maybe make those reflections very shiny, but then add some cloud stuff or some surrounding environment things. Not too much that it will dominate the glossy reflection, but just enough to make the car look like it is there and still reflect with a nice coat of paint . The best example of these reflections needed some other things (like clouds, specs, and trees), is the headlights and windows on the car. They are 'blank' looking, and all you need to do is give those more of a 'sparkle' to make them not look so flat and solid.
But as I was saying, if LFS could have like 2 layers with this glossy reflection AND have some cloud layer below or on top, that would be sexy .
EDIT: Maybe where the sky is, just make soft radial blurs of white to blue or whatever it is, just make soft 'puffs' in the sky above the dark horizon, small and big ones
Yes Tweaker, thanks for your reply. You are right. But I already added cloud textures, not too much, that looks weird, just 15% of the original texture.
I still want to add objects to in in the future, but I still have to figure out what. Because I can add objects from circuits, but some textures are used for more circuits. But I'll need to have a look at the circuits very carefully to do that.
I think the bright sky reflections are a bit too bright. Using a white skin, you can barely see any sponsor logos anymore. I don't think real racecars are made that reflective.
About the environment, maybe you can try to add some e.g. armco reflections for south city, grass and road for the other tracks?
I see what you are getting at. I think it has something to do with the fact that, like has been said, the absence of environmental features being reflected. It seemed like the car was reflecting black and blue and that's it. It just felt a little unnatural to look at in my opinion.
Also, I noticed this only with black (or dark) cars, but with other colors and especially with skinned cars the effect is great. So I say great work for your first release and I hope our suggestions can make it even better!
But have you tried the 256*256 version already? If not, just try it. When that doesn't work either I don't know what the problem is. So then I'm afraid you will have to use the original textures (and if you lost then you should have read the readme.txt :P).
WOW Amazing difference! It gives LFS a whole new look. I was wondering if it is possible to do a simmilar thing for the road textures? I know that the road doesn't really reflect a lot of light but it does reflect some.
Screw DX9 shaders, LFS looks all fine now! I love it how it makes skins look more metallic.
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